Presentation & Sales Training for Technical Professionals

WinbyDesign Volume 1 Issue 1

A NEWSLETTER FROM STEVE WIRTEL, LLC.

that your audience will “get” the point of your message. Too
often, technical professionals assume that the facts speak for
themselves. Worse still, some presenters feel that providing too
much guidance insults their audience’s intelligence. These no-

Dear reader, . Through

tions simply are not true.

ki n g o ut th is newsletter ross
r chec
Michael Alley, associate professor of engineering communica-
Thank you fo w it h cl ie n ts, I come ac ed tion at Penn State University has been studying thesis-based
and work ing. If you ar
e involv
my research
titles for more than 10 years. Alley calls it the “Assertion-Ev
w o rt h s h ar rds...
information th
at is in other wo
idence” approach. He tested the concept on geoscience class-
s er v ic es (
in selling pr
ofession al in the context
es when he taught at Virginia Tech. Alley created two
yo ur s er v ic es
the value of then you
presentations for his classroom lectures: one using phrase-
communicating po rt an t to your clients), based headlines and the other using assertion-evidence
is im
of that which e.
headlines. Students in the assertion-evidence lectures scored
the right plac y signing
have come to newsletter b
higher than those seeing the phrase-based visuals.
re ce iv e th is at my
You can contin
ue to also read more
The method that I teach to my clients was developed by
co m . Y o u ca n
vewirtel.
Robert Perry in the 1960s. Perry passed this knowledge
up at www.ste log.)
vewirtel.com/b
along to Dag Knudsen, my predecessor. We refer to this
blog (www.ste think at
w what you
approach as the Theme-Modular Process. Applying the
le t m e kn o
te and
Send me a no
Theme-Modular Process, every visual has a thesis state-
irtel.com.
ment as the heading that describes WHAT is being
steve@stevew Cheers, discussed and WHY it is being discussed. The analog
Steve graphic that comprises the rest of the visual illustrates the
WHAT and proves the WHY. The figure below illustrates
the Theme-Modular Process.

Thesis titles keep your audience

focused on your presentation +
Your audience needs guidance to understand your message and the
direction of your presentation. Here is how you can give it to them:
use thesis headlines to focus your presentation.
Most presenters default to the wizards and built in formats in their
presentation software. This leads to topic-based “word-visuals” with = AUDIO
headlines consisting of single words or short phrases. Page 2 shows
a typical “word-visual” with a phrase as the title.
Continued on page 2
Visuals without thesis statements don’t guide the audience to the
presenter’s intended meaning.
They also don’t help your audience understand what is important
about the subject and why it is important. Predictably, the result is A thesis statement with supporting
an audience that misses critical information. graphics creates highly effective visuals.
The solution is to create thesis-based headlines that explicitly state
the topic you are discussing on the visual and why you are talking
about it. In a sales setting, the “what” you are discussing is typically You might ask: if the methodology has been around so long, why
a feature of your offering and the “why” is the benefit that feature hasn’t it been adopted by more people? Other than simply not be-
will produce for your audience. ing exposed to the process, there are principally two reasons that
thesis-based headings are not widely used. The first is caused by the
By explicitly stating what you are talking about on each slide and standard formats in presentation software. The default template calls
why it is important to your audience, you are not leaving to chance Continued on page 2

Steve Wirtel provides business development Book your seminar today!

training for professional service providers. (877) 595-7576 - Steve@SteveWirtel.com
Volume 1 Issue 1 WinbyDesign Page 2

Thesis titles, continued from page 1

for a title having very large fonts, typically 40 point. This induces
the designer to minimize the number of words in the title (unless
they break ranks with the template and reduce the title font size.)
The second reason presentation designers use short phrases instead
of thesis-based headlines is inertia. When we see presentation after
presentation using phrase titles, it creates an expectation in the
marketplace. Deviating from the market expectation seems unwar-
ranted or even risky, which perpetuates the problem.
When you begin drafting thesis headings, others may resist. Some
will accuse you of using too many words or spending too much
effort on something as unimportant as your slide titles. That’s
inertia.
The key to using thesis headings is correctly working the visual. Visuals without thesis statements don’t guide
This means reading the thesis heading before explaining each the audience to the presenter’s intended meaning.
slide. But maybe you’ve been told “don’t read your visuals to the
audience.” This axiom applies to some situations but not others.
The “don’t read your slide” rule applies to visuals that contain Using thesis heading requires you to put your audience first; to
only words. When you apply the theme modular process, you will think about what will help them understand your message versus
not be creating word visuals. Instead, you will be using graphics what is easy or comfortable for you to design. Make the decision
to prove the arguments you set forth in your thesis statements. to use thesis titles supported by graphics and your presentations
To optimize your communication, do the following: when a new will become more explicit, people will understand your messages
visual appears, you read the thesis statement, explain the visual, more clearly, and you will convince more audience members to
provide additional explanation, then create a verbal link to the take the actions you intend.
next visual.

Effective Rehearsal Is
the Key to a Winning
Presentation
I just finished an assignment working with
an 11-person team making a two-hour
competitive presentation.
Like any critical competitive interview
presentation, the team struggled to develop
and focus its message. But this group did
one thing right: they began rehearsing
their presentation over two weeks before
the scheduled interview date. The early
start provided time for more than a dozen
rehearsals. The large number of rehearsals
spaced over a two-week period built speaker
confidence, giving the team a distinct com-
petitive advantage. When presentation day
arrived, that team was ready!
When I am helping teams get ready for
high stakes interview presentations, I hear
two common objections to rehearsing:
1. I’m not prepared to rehearse yet
because my slides aren’t ready.
2. I don’t want to rehearse too much or
my delivery will become stale.
Both of these misconceptions deserve
debunking. They are deceptions summoned
to avoid rehearsing. Why? Because we feel
uncomfortable about rehearsals. When we
rehearse, we might look awkward or say the
wrong thing in front of our peers. I have a
suggestion to overcome these concerns that
I’ll describe momentarily. But first...
Let’s look at objection number one: “my
slides aren’t ready.” The quality of your pre-
sentation is only partially governed by the
quality of your visuals. The most important
aspect of your presentation are the words
you say and the way you say them. How
you make the audience feel and how they
feel about you is far more important than
what your visuals look like. It is important
to have good, clear visuals, but slide devel-
opment should not become the critical path
to preparing your presentation.
The second objection I often hear is: “if
I rehearse too much my delivery will
become stale. I do better when I just wing
it.” Tell that one to an actor who rehearses
hundreds of times before taking the stage.
People accept the notion of rehearsing too
much when they lack the conviction to
commit their best to their audience.
In reality, a paradox exists between rehear-
ing and presenting: the more you rehearse,
the more spontaneous your presentation
appears. Michael Caine once remarked,
“Rehearsal is the work, performance is
the relaxation.” When you’ve rehearsed
sufficiently, you build the confidence to be
in the moment during your presentation.
The words will come because you’ve trained
your brain to retrieve them. You become
what is known as an unconscious competent.
Still, the notion of a “dry run” rehearsal cre-
ates uneasiness and anxiety in even seasoned
professionals. But I have a solution. I call it
the protopresentation. A protopresentation
is the act of talking through your presenta-
tion concepts from draft visuals. By work-
ing with draft visuals, there is a low work
investment. A low work investment means
low ego investment. So people are more
agreeable to changes.
But you say “I don’t have draft visuals. My
slides are produced in PowerPoint by our
graphics department.” My advice is that
you sketch out your visuals on paper. And
I have a simple tool to help you. I call it, a
Presentation Aid Layout (PAL) frame. The
PAL frame helps you design visuals that
won’t overload your audiences’ memory sys-
tems. And when teams use the PAL frame
to design presentations, consistency results.
I help my clients by demonstrating how to
create, then storyboard their draft presenta-
tion using the PAL frame. Once they’ve
generated draft visuals, it’s time to place
them up on the wall for evaluation. There is
no substitute for storyboarding your visuals.
You cannot assess your visuals linearly or
Continued on page 3

Steve Wirtel provides business development Book your seminar today!

training for professional service providers. (877) 595-7576 - Steve@SteveWirtel.com
Volume 1 Issue 1 WinbyDesign Page 3

Effective rehearsal, continued from page 2
arranged in a deck. You need to see the entire presentation in
one glance. When you do, you will likely find gaps in your logic,
unnecessary visuals, redundancies, and/or missing information.
Now is the time to fix these problems while your visuals are still
in draft form.
You should rehearse your verbal presentation from draft visuals
for two reasons. One: you won’t know how well your presenta-
tion holds together until you talk your way through it. Two: you
will uncover weaknesses and improvements to your logic. Hence
you reduce time producing visuals that get removed from the
presentation.
Protopresenting also allows others to participate in the presenta-
tion generation process. New people can be brought in to review
the presentation as it evolves. Hence, the protopresentation
secures early acceptance, data, and approval of the message. This
simple technique dramatically improves the quality of your pre-
sentations. Only when you’re satisfied with the protopresentation
should you produce final visuals.
Simple protopresentation secures early
agreement, approval & data.
The problem with presentation preparation is this - when you
haven’t rehearsed enough, it shows. And what it says to the audi-
ence is this: “you are not important enough to justify time to fully
prepare for this presentation.” In a competitive interview situation,
creating this impression in your audience is deadly. Use proto-
presentations to set yourself apart and win your next interview
presentation.
STEVE’S READS
MOONWALKING WITH EINSTEIN by Joshua Foer
In Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer tackles the chal-
lenging subject of how our mind and memory system func-
tions, explaining a complex process in a clear and simple
fashion. But Foer takes his subject well beyond the norm. In
addition to researching memory and providing interesting
stories to demonstrate how our
brains work, he becomes a sub-
ject in his own experiment. He
spends a year learning memory
techniques (known as mnemon-
ics), then enters the U.S. Memory
Championship. I won’t spoil the
ending for you, but it is compel-
ling reading.
Memory is critical to effective
interview presentations. As a
speaker, you need techniques
to help remember your content
and narrative. And from your
audience’s perspective, you need
to understand how much information people can absorb and
remember. If we violate these limits, we overload our audienc-
es memory systems causing them to tune out and lose focus. In
a competitive interview situation where the margin of victory
can be razor thin, this factor can be the difference between
winning and finishing a close second.
In my workshops, we spend a good deal of time discussing
memory. I administer a test that challenges the group’s collec-
tive cognitive capacity. Once participants appreciate their own
memory limits, they become much more empathetic towards
their audiences’ limitations. Workshop graduates are equipped
to design presentations that do not violate their audiences’
memory limits.
Moonwalking with Einstein entertains while it educates. You’ll
come away knowing more than you ever expected about how
the human brain works. This knowledge will not only serve to
understand yourself better, it will help you understand your
clients and colleagues better too. This knowledge can make you
a superior manager, communicator, and technical professional.

A Quick note about ...The client has read my proposal, so

they
understand my offerin g.
...The client already understands the problem
to be sol ved so I don ’t nee d to explain it.
sis stat ement on each
...The audience can read my thecomm unic ate it to them.
Assumptions are dangerous. When we assume, we are visual so I don’t nee d to
graph so I don’t
risking that the audience knows what we are thinking. ...The audience knows how to read a
Look to the right for common assumptions to avoid... need to explain it.

The Bottom Assumptions are implicit. It’s better

tterr to
to bbee ex
explicit.
pli
liciit H
Help
ellp your audience to the information necessary tto
Line: make an informed decision. Your audience will thank you (often with their business.)

Steve Wirtel provides business development Book your seminar today!

training for professional service providers. (877) 595-7576 - Steve@SteveWirtel.com
Volume 1 Issue 1 WinbyDesign Page 4

Do you want to increase your business

development efficiency and effectiveness?
Consider what these firms were able to
accomplish after just one workshop...

“When we decided to improve our business development process, we evaluated many

alternatives. We selected Steve Wirtel because his program was a good fit for our
organization. Within four months of engaging Steve, we’ve seen our investment repaid
and his program hit the mark, inspiring new ideas for our teams. We believe that the
impact of Steve’s program played a significant role in our recent selection for a new $50
million healthcare project.”
Paul Tyler, Group President, Haskell

“Steve - The Thursday after the theme-modular seminar, we had a

competitive presentation for a project. Result: a win for us! Results
speak volumes. Thanks for the help.”
Patrick Fuss, West Yost Associates

4001 N. 54th Place

Phoenix, AZ 85018